ANKARA - Parliament said on Monday that, ''Grand National Assembly condemns biased and faulty decision of Swiss National Assembly which deliberately distorted historical facts, and evaluates the decision as unacceptable.'' as it answered the decision of Swiss Parliament about so-called Armenian genocide.
Parliament issued a statement which said: ''Parliament felt indignation over the decision of the lower house of the Swiss parliament to recognize the so-called Armenian genocide.
It is obvious that this decision which was based on many baseless allegations and wrong information would not contribute to searches for peace and stability in a sensitive region of the world as well as relations between Turkish and Armenian people.
Turkish Parliament believes that parliaments are not convenient places to take decisions with regard to controversial incidents that occurred in history.
Parliaments should exert efforts to improve friendship and cooperation among countries and to hand over a more peaceful world to the next generations. It is among the essential duties of all the parliaments to try to create an atmosphere where mutual respect, tolerance and solidarity would prevail in a world where people of different nations live together, instead of inciting feeling of hatred between peoples in the world.
Parliaments should refrain from falling into a position serving to goals of the circles that call for clashes among civilizations. Today, terrorism is the biggest threat toward our civilization.
In a period which the countries should be in solidarity and cooperation against terrorism internationally, we consider the wrong decision in question as awarding the racist Armenian terrorism that caused lives of many innocent people and had also targeted interests of many countries including Switzerland.
The Swiss National Assembly, with this decision which deeply offended the Turkish origin people living in this country that contributed to the economy of this country, at the same time undertook the responsibility of negative developments that may occur in Turkish-Swiss relations.
(AY-AÖ) 22.12.2003